RICHMOND has suffered a huge blow with premiership duo Dion Prestia and Bachar Houli set to be out until after the bye as they deal with calf and groin injuries respectively. 

Prestia has not played since the round seven win against Fremantle while Houli, 30, suffered a groin strain in last Saturday's victory over St Kilda.

"Bachar felt a little bit of a pop in his groin after a long kick to Dan Butler," Tigers physical performance manager Peter Burge told richmondfc.com.au.

"We tried some things to get him back out there, but he wasn't right. So it's probably going to be a medium-term injury.

"It's disappointing but we'll start his rehab phase this week and get him up and running and fit for post-bye."

Richmond, 8-2, face Essendon, Port Adelaide and Geelong in the lead-up to its week off.

Prestia, 25, hasn’t recovered as the club would have liked after it initially hoped the midfielder would be out for a short period, as coach Damien Hardwick said almost three weeks ago. 

"He started running a week and a half ago and did a good week of conditioning last week. He's just at that point now where we can't quite progress back into skills," Burge said.

"We're in a bit of a holding pattern with him. We want to make sure we get it right so we'll get a little bit of a short preparation in and then we'll resume skills, hopefully in the next couple of weeks.

"But it's probably more a medium-term injury than a short-term injury now.

"We've had to revise our timeline a bit, but given Dion's pre-season and some of the interruptions he's had, we want to make absolutely sure he's right for the second half of the year so we are being cautious."

Forward Jack Riewoldt is looking good to return against Essendon on Saturday night after being concussed against the Saints, with Thursday's training session to prove critical.

"He's feeling good today and he's a probable for this week. He'll train tomorrow, train Thursday, and really he's just got to tick a few little boxes with the doc in terms of concussion testing, which we expect will go well," Burge said.

Defender Dylan Grimes will return from back soreness if he trains fully this week while Jason Castagna is "50-50" as he recovers from a hyperextended knee.

Young gun Daniel Rioli will progress to a full game after playing three quarters in the win over Coburg in the VFL as he recovers from a broken left foot suffered in last year's decider.

Richmond is hopeful Anthony Miles (back) and Shai Bolton (quad corkie) return for the VFL side this weekend.